Immigration and America

I have been hearing a lot about the new immigration bill lately. I am happy to see from a New York Times/CBS News poll that Americans support the Immigration bill. I am happy to see that the middle is getting it right. Often on TV and Radio you only see the extremes of this conversation. You rarely get a commentator that takes the middle argument.

My experence with illegal immigrants is that they are extremely hard working. They are here to better themselves and their families. To me, that is the type of person that we should be attracting to America. Coming to America is often dangerous. They risk life and limb to take low paying jobs.

After a few hours of listening to Lou Dobbs. I am starting to wonder if Immigration is the next War On Drugs. I mean that Lou Dobbs has two main points, 1) we need to stop illegal immigration and 2) we need to secure the boarder. I have an idea, if we really want to make sure that bad guys, like terrorist and criminals are not coming over the boarder, let the people who are coming here for a job come in legally.

I am wondering if we need to radically rethink immigration. Lets make it so anyone without a criminal record can get a work visa. No caps or limits, they do not need a job before coming over. No need for a work permit. Let our job market truly be a free market. Anyone who comes here, you can get a job. We could take all the money we are using worried about people who come here to work and just focus on the people who come here for crime. That way we could really focus on who is crossing the boarder. There would be no reason for regular families to sneak over the boarder.

I know if I said this to Lou Dobbs he would freak out. I would like someone to show me the economics of why this would be a bad idea. Until someone does, I think this will be my current stance.

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